I don’t know how to define a little joke, but I really just mean one that doesn’t necessarily go for the huge laugh, but it just in there to keep the comedy going and for little fun gags the writers or movie-makers thought of. I’ll give you a quick one.
In Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, they take Death(the Grim Reaper) to a Hardware store to get supplies. He passes by a guy smoking and just says, “See you soon.”
Movie does not pause or wait for laughs, it’s just a quick little joke that always made me laugh or smile when I saw the movie.
Can you think of quick little jokes in movies you love?
Believe it or not, there’s one in Mel Gibson’s 2004 The Passion of the Christ. Story has it Jesus was a high-level carpenter, what we now distinguish as a ‘cabinetmaker’. There’s a scene in the movie where his mother Mary is looking for him because she wants him to come have lunch. She asks what he’s working on. Something new, he says, showing her his work. “Tall kitchen chairs”. She looks it over skeptically and says “Tall kitchen chairs? It’ll never catch on.” The audience laughed in an odd relief.
Separately, Gibson said in a making-of documentary that there were scenes he tried to make easier on the actors by directing while wearing a red dot clown nose and a cowboy hat.
Miracle on 34th St. has a few: Doris and Mr. Shellhammer are discussing Kris Kringle’s sanity and he says Maybe he’s only a little crazy like painters or composers or… or some of those men in Washington.
There’s a scene in “Blazing Saddles” where the character played by Alex Karras rides into town, and a terrified bystander exclaims “Mongo! Santamaria!!”
Mrs. J. and I were the only people in the theater who laughed, meaning no one else got the joke or didn’t think it was funny.
In Olive the Other Reindeer the reindeer Schnitzel (Played by Michael Stipe of REM) is the cousin of Blitzen, but isn’t part of Santa’s reindeer because, he says, “flightless, unfortunately.”
Tommy Lee Jones has a great throwaway line in Men In Black. His Agent K shows Will Smith’s Agent J a new data storage format. “Fascinating little gadget - it’s going to replace the CD soon… guess I’ll have to buy The White Album again.”
In The Hudsucker Proxy, Hudsucker Industries mail clerk-turned-president Norville Barnes calls the mailroom supervisor - and is promptly chewed out for not sorting the day’s mail, as the supervisor apparently hadn’t been informed of the promotion. What follows is one of my favorite jokes to ever appear in a Coen Brothers film:
BARNES: I’m president of the company now-
SUPERVISOR: I don’t care if you’re president of the company!
In Superman (the Christopher Reeve one) there’s a little scene where Clark Kent is about to change into his Superman outfit, and glances at one of those payphones-on-a-pole things they used to have. An obvious reference to the classic “Superman changes in a phone booth” Superman trope.
I love that they have a Mexican restaurant in Anchorman called Escupimos en su Alimento, which means “we spit in your food.” I had to have that pointed out to me, but I’ve been studying Spanish pretty seriously over the last few years, so I’m looking forward to being able to figure stuff like that out for myself in the future.
A joke in Galaxy Quest, so quick that I missed it the first dozen times I saw it:
Teb is explaining to Gwen that the Thermians have never actually used the (teleporter) Digital Conveyer, saying among other things that, “it was built to accommodate your anatomy, not ours.”
As he says, “your anatomy,” he gives a tiny “hmm” noise and glances quickly at Gwen’s bust.
Some very quick jokes in the Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs films.
In the first one Flint creates an entire building out of Jell-o and lists the various things in it that are also made of Jell-o - a piano, sconces, statues, ghetto blasters, and… a mini-Jello mold. There’s just something about the inclusion of “that Jell-o” in the list that always makes me laugh.
The first film also has a literal running gag involving a TV set with legs.
In the second film, Flint is fleeing monsters and spots an alley to duck down…only to run splat into a picture of an alley on a billboard advertising “SWALLOW FALLS ALLEYS - Building Quality Alleys Since 1973”. It’s another blink-and-you-miss-it gag but the idea of a company that sells alleys also tickles me inordinately.
There was a movie with Bob Hope and a blond that he was pursuing while she was just using him for… something. I don’t recall the name of the movie or the actress, but I remember this line (maybe not word for word, but still…)
Bob: I’ve acted like a real dog, and you’ve been like a mother to me.
